Rethinking Environmental Racism: White Privilege and Urban Development in Southern California
نویسنده
چکیده
Geographic studies of environmental racism have focused on the spatial relationships between environmental hazards and community demographics in order to determine if inequity exists. Conspicuously absent within this literature, however, is any substantive discussion of racism. This paper seeks to address this shortcoming in two ways. I first investigate how racism is understood and expressed in the literature. I argue that although racism is rarely explicitly discussed, a normative conceptualization of racism informs the research. Not only is this prevailing conception overly narrow and restrictive, it also denies the spatiality of racism. Consequently, my second goal is to demonstrate how various forms of racism contribute to environmental racism. In addition to conventional understandings of racism, I emphasize white privilege, a highly structural and spatial form of racism. Using Los Angeles as a case study, I examine how whites have secured relatively cleaner environments by moving away from older industrial cores via suburbanization. I suggest that the historical processes of suburbanization and decentralization are instances of white privilege and have contributed to contemporary patterns of environmental racism. Thus, in addition to interpreting racism as discriminatory facility siting and malicious intent, I also examine a less conscious but hegemonic form of racism, white privilege. Such an approach not only allows us to appreciate the range of racisms that shape the urban landscape, but also illuminates the functional relationships between places—in particular between industrial zones and residential suburbs, and how their development reflects and reproduces a particular racist formation.
منابع مشابه
Urban Space, Restrictive Covenants and the Origins of Racial Residential Segregation in a US City, 1900–50*
The origins of racial residential segregation in US cities have been a central concern to scholars examining the relationship between race, racism and urban development. Conventional accounts focus on the advent of industrialization, the ‘Great Migration’ of southern blacks to northern cities after the first world war, and white prejudice and racial discrimination in creating racially segregate...
متن کاملApplication of Environmental Justice Concept in Urban Planning, the Peri-Urban Environment of Tehran as the Case Study
Abstract Environmental Justice (EJ) concept consists of multifaceted movements, community struggles, and discourses in contemporary societies that seek to reduce environmental risks, increase environmental protections, and generally reduce environmental inequalities suffered by minority and poor communities a term that incorporates ‘environmental racism’ and ‘environmental classism,’ captures ...
متن کاملRace, Class, Gender, and American Environmentalism
This paper examines the environmental experiences of middle and working class whites and people of color in the United States during the 19 th and 20 th centuries. It examines their activism and how their environmental experiences influenced the kinds of discourses they developed. The paper posits that race, class, and gender had profound effects on people's environmental experiences, and conse...
متن کاملDevelopment and Implementation of Regional Planning Model: Use Southern California Planning Model (SCPM) as an Example
Regional planning model is critical for the planning support system employed by Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO). As an example of regional planning model, Southern California Planning Model (SCPM) incorporates economic input-output analysis to a spatial allocation model and reports results in considerable spatial detail. The economic inputoutput model is used to estimate the indirect a...
متن کاملذخیره در منابع من
با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید
عنوان ژورنال:
دوره شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2015